Underwater Trade Routes

From AgeofWiki

This step-by-step guide is meant to walk through creating a submerged trade route. It's a supplement to the Guide to Underwater Buildings, Units, and Terrains.

The inspiration for underwater trade came from a map error on an Unknown map in AOE3. Somehow the trade route randomly continued off the edge of the continent, into the water. I watched spellbound as the trade stagecoach slipped beneath the waves and disappeared, rumbling on to some unknown destination.

Much to our delight, it's possible to place a functional trade route partly or entirely underwater and upgrade it, or route it across a river as part of a bridge or ford (see Bridges and Crossings). This is a very rewarding way to encourage water traffic on your river maps. It adds a new level of strategy to controlling the sea. And it stashes the trade route out of the way of your walled city, so you can expand, or turtle up, without hindrance.

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Making the Trade Route

While it's possible to gain XP from trading posts anywhere near a trade route, it is intuitive to put them as close to the route as practical. So your underwater trade route will need to be sort of close to land at several points. It's easy to place a Route along a shoreline, and sculpt the shore to have room for one or more sockets. This will help you remember where the route is, if your water type changes later on and the route is hidden. (The location of the route and trade cart is always shown on the map in the Editor.) This also applies to maps with multiple or intersecting hidden routes.

Place your water first. In this example, we start with a gently curved river.

Edit River: Place some beautification at this point, if you wish to keep the river eddies and flow currents. Later you will be painting over the river with free water tool, and directional flow currents are not available for freehand water bodies. The river eddies will remain in place, as long as you do not use Edit Water again.

Use Water Tool to trace over your river with a same-size brush of Berlin water. (I use Berlin water type during underwater scenario building. It's transparent, color-neutral, and has a smooth surface so I can see what I'm doing below the surface.)

Place your Trade Route. Start at one end of the river, right down the middle, and follow the curve of the river as closely as possible. You may wish to use the Terrain Grid as a guide to predict where the Trade Route waypoints will appear.

When you are finished, the Trade Route should course along the bottom of the river. A trade cart or travois should appear at the starting waypoint and begin traveling along it. Extend and sculpt the river to encompass small trade route deviations towards the edge.

Deepen the riverbed around the trade route to completely submerge the trade cart. You may need to deepen it further to hide steam plumes coming from the locomotive, etc. The depth of the river bed and Trade Route will only affect its visibility from the surface, not the XP rate or any other functional aspect of the Route.

Place sockets along your route. Place them at sites where the trade route comes close to the riverbank naturally. Put a balanced number of sites on each side of the river.

You can build a trade post on a cliff overlooking the river, for dramatic effect (and some protection from attack)
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Test your trade sockets in the Editor. Place a trade post there under Player 1 to verify that a post can be built there. Test the scenario as Player 1 to see how much XP you get, and whether you can upgrade your trade route.

Upgrade through Coach and Locomotive to verify that the riverbed is deep enough. In these examples, you can see a telltale plume of locomotive smoke between the fishing boats. Lowering the riverbed would hide the plume.

Note that fishing, whaling, and naval combat are all possible directly over a Trade Route.

You can edit the water to conceal your Trade Route. Building docks and adding a few crates and harbor props around your waterfront Trade Site can create the impression of a seaport or shipping town.

Warning: Using Edit Water to change water types will overwrite riverbed terrains and erase Beautify objects, such as flow eddies and river rocks. You can add them back manually but it's tedious to get them all in proper flow orientation.